por admin » Mié Sep 29, 2010 6:59 pm
La lealtad a Obama le esta costando a algunos democratas
Candidatos que ganaron facilmente hace dos anios estan teniendo problemas para ser reelegidos en Noviembre. Vive por el presidente y podrias morir por el presidente. Esa es la leccion de estas elecciones. Todos los candidatos que votaron a favor de las leyes de Obama perderan las elecciones de Noviembre.
Los democratas que votaron en contra de las leyes propuestas por Obama estan teniendo mejor acogida.
Los candidatos democratas se estan divorciando de Obama y no quieren ser asociados con el.
Loyalty to Obama Costs Democrats
By JONATHAN WEISMAN
DOYLESTOWN, Pa.—Rep. Patrick Murphy, a fresh-faced rising Democratic star and loyal backer of President Barack Obama's agenda, is facing the fight of his life in a suburban Philadelphia district Mr. Obama won easily two years ago.
Across Pennsylvania, another Democrat, Rep. Jason Altmire, is competing in a district Republican John McCain took by a wide margin. Mr. Altmire is running away with it, by running away from the president.
Rep. Patrick Murphy, left, with grass-root activists working to repeal the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" legislation in March.
.In their contrasting fates lie broader lessons for the coming midterms: Live by the president and you could die by the president. Democrats who have been thorns in the president's side are doing well in some of the toughest districts for their party, from Alabama to the steel belt of western Pennsylvania. But swing-district Democrats who have voted with the president in Congress are struggling, even if they're now asserting their independence.
Mr. Altmire voted against the Obama health-care and climate-change bills. "My opponent is trying to tie me in with the speaker and with the leadership. That's pretty difficult to do," he said. He holds a double-digit lead.
If Democrats running against the White House prevail, the result could have a profound impact on the party's ability to govern. More than 30 Democrats with proven records of independence are campaigning on this theme, and scores more have started trying to do so late in the game. Even if the party maintains control of the House, it almost certainly won't have a functioning liberal majority, Democratic aides and lawmakers say. Conservative Democrats would be emboldened to go their own way, especially if many colleagues who stuck with the president lose.
Rep. Bobby Bright, an Alabama Democrat who calls himself a "fiercely independent" conservative, said the Democratic leadership largely let conservative House Democrats vote according to the dictates of their districts, a low-risk approach for a party with 77 more seats than Republicans. A loss of even a dozen would put Democratic conservatives in the catbird seat, assuming they return and remain united.
"No matter what, the vote counts are going to be different," said Mr. Altmire, who represents a district outside Pittsburgh. "You're not going to be able to win these votes 219-212" in the House if dozens of centrists and conservatives are voting no.
In Democratic caucus meetings throughout 2009 and this year, White House senior adviser David Axelrod repeatedly made the case that wavering Democrats would be tarred by Republicans with the president's agenda whether they liked it or not. So, he argued, they might as well vote with the White House.
But resistance to the agenda is rewarding some House Democrats as the midterm elections approach. Mr. Bright from Alabama voted against the president on health care, climate change, the stimulus act and Wall Street regulation—and in one of the most conservative districts represented by any Democrat, he is strongly in the running.
Rep. Larry Kissell squeaked into office on the Obama wave in North Carolina with the backing of liberal Internet activists. Now, he is touting his votes against the health overhaul and the climate bill that would cap emissions of greenhouse gases, and is sporting a double-digit polling lead.
Races in 2010
.See which House, Senate and governors' races are considered closest.
More interactive graphics and photos
.In a conservative Mississippi House district, Democratic Rep. Travis Childers stunned the GOP by winning a special election in May 2008. Republicans thought it was a fluke. But after opposing the Democratic health-care, climate-change and financial-regulation bills, Rep. Childers is running strongly again.
Loyalist Democrats in conservative districts have found themselves in the cross hairs, literally. On Thursday, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin launched a website aimed at voting out 20 House Democrats who represent districts she and Sen. McCain won in 2008 and who voted for Mr. Obama's health-care plan. Picturing them in gun sights, takebackthe20.com calls for ousting "those who disregarded the will of the people."
The pattern of opponents of the Obama agenda doing better than supporters in conservative and swing districts shows up mainly in races for the House, not the Senate. With Republicans uniformly opposing the president's major initiatives, no Democratic senators were free to vote against them. In addition, Senate candidates face statewide constituencies whose political leanings are more diverse than those of some House districts.
Among the strongest Democratic resisters of the national party's leadership is Rep. Walt Minnick in Idaho, who even has the backing of some tea-party activists. He is attacking his Republican opponent, Raul Labrador, as soft on illegal immigrants.
Mr. Minnick's campaign manager, John Foster, said the congressman and his staff worked hard to establish his independent credentials early. "From Day One, we didn't drink the Kool-Aid," Mr. Foster said.
Polling shows a high 90% of voters in Mr. Minnick's Idaho district know who he is, and his approval ratings are sky-high. The Republican considered his strongest challenger lost in the GOP primary. The race is considered a toss-up, but aides to Mr. Minnick say that is only because he is hampered by the "D" next to his name in the conservative western-Idaho district. If he wins, they say, it will be because he has run tough races before in inhospitable territory.
"Life's a lot different when you're used to people trying to hit you," Mr. Foster said. "There are folks out there who haven't been hit hard in a long time."
It is too early to say how these races will finish, cautioned Nathan Gonzalez, a House political analyst at the nonpartisan Rothenberg Political Report. Some polls are suspect, he said, and some leads taken by conservative Democrats will tighten as their Republican challengers gain name recognition. But as a political strategy, he added, "These numbers seem to support independence rather than an embrace of the president's agenda."
Mr. Axelrod, the White House adviser, said the Democratic agenda offers plenty of selling points. "I personally believe that…standing up to the banks, to take $60 billion of unwarranted subsidies away and give it to students to help them get a higher education, is something I would want to campaign on," he said.
Even before the midterm elections, the Democrats' more-conservative House members are having an impact. A letter with 31 Democratic signatures calling for the extension of all of George W. Bush's expiring tax cuts has frozen House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's plan to hold a vote on extending just the cuts for families earning under $250,000.
Democrats from conservative districts who have voted with the president shouldn't be surprised they are struggling, said David Brady, a Stanford University political scientist. He and two Stanford colleagues analyzed the results of more than 6,500 congressional races between 1956 and 1996 and concluded that voters hold their legislators accountable for voting that strays from the district's ideological core.
Based on that 2002 study, Mr. Brady and Douglas Rivers, both senior fellows at Stanford's conservative-leaning Hoover Institution, analyzed the current 435 House districts and their representatives' votes on the stimulus, health-care and climate-change bills. Their conclusion is that Democrats are likely to lose a net 40 seats to Republicans. That would be give the Republicans a House majority of one.
"In 1994, all the Democrats who lost were more liberal than their districts. The Republicans who lost in 1982 were the people pulled to the right by their leadership," Mr. Brady said. "The people who vote with their leadership are the ones that face campaigns that say they are out of touch with their districts."
David Plouffe, who managed Mr. Obama's 2008 presidential campaign, challenged that analysis as too simple, saying campaigns have their own idiosyncrasies. For instance, he said, Mr. Altmire, the Pittsburgh-area Democrat who voted against part of the Obama agenda and now is running well, faces a relatively weak Republican challenger.
Some Democratic aides contend Mr. Murphy in suburban Philadelphia, an Iraq War veteran promoted as a leading party voice on defense matters, has suffered from spending too much time promoting the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" rules governing gays in the military, and not enough on his re-election. (The repeal effort met a legislative setback earlier this month.)
Mr. Plouffe said the president and Democratic leadership knew that issues such as health care and climate change would be "tough politics." He added: "If there are short-term political costs to be paid, we need to pay them."
For loyal Democrats such as Mr. Murphy, that may be an unwelcome message. He latched onto Mr. Obama early and became his 2008 Pennsylvania campaign chairman. Then he voted with the White House on all four of its highest-profile bills.
Now Mr. Murphy is in danger. An independent poll released last week by Franklin & Marshall College in Pennsylvania found him trailing his Republican opponent, former Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick, by 36% to 46% among registered Bucks County voters and by 49%-35% among those likely to go to the polls.
District voters "need to recognize Patrick Murphy was one of the first politicians in Pennsylvania to support Barack Obama. That may have worked out for Patrick Murphy [in 2008]. It didn't work so well for the people of the district," said Mr. Fitzpatrick, who narrowly lost an election to Mr. Murphy four years ago.
Mr. Murphy declined to comment, but supporters did. "Patrick's got to get in there, talk about himself, talk about what he's accomplished, but really talk about it," said Pennsylvania's Democratic governor, Ed Rendell. "People think we've got to hide almost. You can't hide."
Some Democrats appear to be trying. Rep. Joe Donnelly in Indiana recently posted an advertisement proclaiming he stood apart from "the Washington crowd." The backdrop was a picture that showed House Republican Leader John A. Boehner of Ohio—but also President Obama and Speaker Pelosi.
The National Republican Congressional Campaign Committee responded with an ad pointing to Mr. Donnelly's votes for the health-care overhaul, the stimulus bill and the financial-regulation law.
"Independent? No," the ad said, with a picture of Mr. Donnelly superimposed on a photo of Mr. Obama and Ms. Pelosi.
Mike Meginniss, a 23-year-old sales representative in the Philadelphia suburb of Doylestown, voted for Mr. Obama and is ready to vote for Mr. Murphy in November, but not enthusiastically. Socially liberal but economically conservative, Mr. Meginniss has his doubts about many of the president's economic policies. And he has one message for Democratic candidates.
"If you were 'Obama, Obama, Obama' in 2009, it's not going to cut it to run away from him now," he said.